


The Return

by nicpic



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Character Death, Gen, Post-Canon, but its there, jeangst, pre-mart harry is a piece of shit, the happy ending is a bit questionable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28518885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicpic/pseuds/nicpic
Summary: Precinct 41 receives a call from a phone booth in Martinaise, reporting a dead body.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois & Jean Vicquemare, Harry Du Bois & Kim Kitsuragi, Kim Kitsuragi & Jean Vicquemare
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	The Return

Out on the cold ice lining the sea, a nameless young woman passes a small collection of coast shacks, eyeing the black silhouette of the church rising from the white, and turns right. Geometric chunks of ice break off into smaller and smaller vertices, melting imperceptibly amongst the reeds of spring. She sighs. Takes out a pack of Astras. Smokes one. Two. Watches the sun climb in the sky.

Another silhouette. In the water. As dark as the church. She stubs out the rest of her smoke and approaches, curious. Her fingers are numb in the cold.

A minute later, Precinct 41 receives a call from a phone booth in Martinaise, reporting a dead body.

* * *

Kim is the first to notice that Harry is very late to work. At most, the detective is half an hour behind the clock, wringing his hands, apologetically explaining that he had to help an old lady finally open her own bakery, or went on a wild escapade with a pair of junkie kids, or otherwise. At first, Kim hadn’t quite believed him. It seemed impossible that one man could attract so many adventures. 

Vicquemare hadn’t believed him either, for different reasons; he thought the detective was relapsing. But if the increased goodwill towards the RCM over the past several months is any indication, many citing the mutton-chopped detective, Harry was telling the truth.

Still, he should’ve arrived at the precinct an hour ago.

Jean glances up from his paperwork, noticing Kim searching the office area. “Need something, sir?” He glances at Harry’s desk. “Ah.”

Another sweep across the room. McLaine goes out for a smoke. There’s a plant that needs watering wilting in the corner, but no Harry. “Do you know where he is, sergeant?” 

Jean grimaces. “No, lieutenant.” Kim nods; he didn’t expect him to. 

Another half-hour passes. Kim taps the giant stack of folders on his desk. Once. Twice. He glances at the station entrance every six minutes. 

McCoy saunters in, looks around. After a moment of confusion, he turns to Jean. “Where in the fuck is that bastard?”

Tension Kim didn’t notice building reaches an apex in Jean’s shoulders. He grits his teeth. “How the hell would I know?”

McCoy sniffs, fingers his tin cigarette case. “Well, when you see him, Vicky, let him know Pryce is after his ass.” He nods at Kim. “Good morning, Kitsuragi. Same thing: let your partner know that the Captain is looking for him.”

“Fuck off.” McCoy flips him off with a smirk and leaves the way he came.

* * *

Two patrol officers are dispatched to retrieve the body. Standard fare. They park besides a neon sign mounted above the church entrance, reading “The Return.” It seems it hasn’t been used in a while. They disembark and prepare a body bag.

Snow crunches under their feet, lit golden in the morning light. One of the officers kick it, spraying flecks of glistening ice for a meter in front of them. They grin.

They arrive on scene. The man face down in the water is very large. It takes both of them to drag the body completely out of the shallow water. An officer flips the corpse over, places their hands on its chest, and performs the Stations of Breath. 

The second officer takes out their ledger and flips it to a blank autopsy form, but before he can begin, the officer examining the body gasps. She recognized the man.

“Lieutenant...?”

* * *

Harry doesn’t show up for the rest of the morning. As soon as Kim is able to leave—taking advantage of his accumulated off hours—he drives to the detective’s apartment in the afternoon. He goes faster than necessary, grips the steering levers tighter than necessary. At the base of the stairwell of the apartment complex, he stops. Takes a deep breath. Ascends the steps one by one, instead of two.

He arrives at Harry’s door. Knocks. Nobody answers. He takes out his spare key and enters the apartment.

It is as much as he left it last; a few takeout containers on the counter, the radio crackling softly on top of an antique dresser. Kim switches it off. A poster of Contact Mike. A collection of Guillaume Le Million tapes gathering dust on a shelf. Harry hasn’t listened to much disco lately. Instead, he’s been looking into the anodic music scene. 

“The music of the young. Of the future,” he’d said.

He’d bought three tickets to the next underground anodic festival, taking place on Boogie Street in two months. Kim smiles. The detective was quite excited.

When asked about the third ticket, he became pensive. “It’s uh— well.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I wanted to ask if Jean wanted to come. He’ll probably say no, won’t he? As always.”

Yes, he definitely would. “Perhaps. But you should ask. Maybe he'll surprise us both"

Harry beams. “Yeah. I’ll do it tomorrow. Anyways, here. Take all three.” Harry flashed a grin. “For safekeeping.” 

That was four days ago. The slips of pale blue, laminated paper burn a hole in Kim’s chest pocket. He walks past the kitchenette, into the bedroom. A pile of clothes dominate a chair, as usual. The clock on the wall ticks, as usual. Still no Harry.

“Where are you?” Kim asks, to no one in particular. The wind batters against a closed window, carrying the scent of sea salt.

* * *

Jules Pideu hears the small bell notifying an incoming call. He picks it up, receives the message with all the professionalism his long years have granted him, and sets the receiver down. Only then does he allow himself a moment, watching his hands tremble against his desk.

He writes two notes. One to be delivered to the Captain and one to Jean-Heron Vicquemare.

Note 1. Written on a small rectangular piece of cardstock, the RCM logo stamped in the corner. _LTN-2JFR found dead on the coast of Martinaise. Cause of death unclear. Likely drowned. Signs of severe pale irradiation. Body being sent in for autopsy. Awaiting further instructions._

Note 2. Written on a memo pad, then carefully torn out. _Jean, please come to the Comm. Office as soon as possible. If Kitsuragi is with you, tell him to come also. It’s urgent. —J.P._

He hands them to the errand boy, with instructions, and returns to his desk. He feels his age; the wrinkles in his face seem to sag lower, his joints ache with faint certainty. Amongst the whir of machine and static hum, he feels he can lose himself on radio waves long gone, bouncing in empty air for eternity. He wonders if it is akin to being lost in the pale.

He takes the time to quietly construct what to say to Jean: a man half his age, but so much more broken than himself.

* * *

Jean exits the Communications Office devoid of expression. The news will spread like wildfire in around half an hour, but right now, Jamrock is unaware. The 41st chugs on, and it’ll continue even after. 

He walks slowly, deliberately, down to the morgue. In a few minutes, Harry’s bloated corpse will arrive. Nobody will claim the body. Harry told him so, years ago, that most of his relatives are dead and gone, and the ones that remain hate his guts. And it's doubtful he left a will specifying any non-relatives that can do his funeral arrangements. How sad.

Gottlieb notices him walk in. They stare at each other. They both know.

He’s dead.

“Sergeant—”

“Gotty, he finally did it. A final ‘fuck off, Jean,’” Jean looks to the side, unable to meet his gaze. Something bloodshot and ugly boils up in him. “Good riddance.” Jean sets himself down into a folding metal chair, meant for visitors. He slumps forward, elbows on knees.

He buries his face in his hands. “Good fucking riddance,” he snarls.

A little later, a new corpse is rolled into the station lazareth’s back entrance. Mutton chops damp from ocean water. Soggy flare pants, ends sagging against pale ankles. Jean stands and heads towards the back door, towards him, still out of sight. Gottlieb blocks the way.

“No.”

“Gottlieb—”

“No. You’re not going in there.” Gottlieb is reminded of the fact that Jean is 36, but the marks in his face say otherwise. He doesn’t want them to get deeper.

“I can handle it. I handled it for five years.” Jean chuckles, without humor. “And the shitkid was already a corpse for four of them.”

“Jean—”

Red rushes up through Jean’s throat, burning hot. “I was his fucking partner,” he shouts. Hair dark and wild. Eyes glittering with anger. He grabs the doctor’s collar, but he doesn’t flinch. “So can I please look at him before you and your attendants cut him apart? Don’t I deserve at least that?”

Gottlieb stands firm. “The only ones who can visit him now are relatives and his partner, as per code.”

“Fucking—” Jean throws his hands up. “Kitsuragi. Of course. He’s not even here right now. And when’s the last time you cared about fucking code? You performed a fucking appendectomy on Sundance while drunk off your ass.”

Silence sinks. Standstill. Gottlieb glares at Jean, and he glares back. 

Gottlieb lets out an irritated huff, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Fine.” Jean pushes past him. “I’ll give you five minutes.”

Jean just slams the door behind him.

* * *

Kim exits the apartment complex and enters his Kineema. Daylight still shines strong over the cityscape, diffusing into brown and yellows on the horizon. Spring is coming, once again.

The receiver is ringing. Odd. The station should know that he’s currently off the clock. Kim picks it up.

Communications Officer Pideu’s voice comes through. “Lieutenant Kitsuragi, are you there?” Also strange; he’s not using any codes. 

“Yes, officer. Has something happened at the precinct?”

A moment of silence. A deep breath. Anticipation climbs in Kim’s chest. “Your partner, Harrier Du Bois, was found dead on the shores of Martinaise at 6:23 this morning. There were no clear signs of cause of death, but it is likely he drowned or died from pale radiation.”

Kim can’t speak. 

“He is currently at the station lazareth, if you would like to—”

“I’ll be there.”

“...We can have someone pick you up.”

“I can drive, Pideu, thank you.” And Kim hangs up.

The lieutenant sits there for a minute, staring out the window. Martinaise, huh. It begins and ends there. 

The clouds seem blurry. He reaches up, takes his glasses off, and wipes them on his jacket sleeve. When he puts them back on, his fingers brush against something wet. The clouds are still blurry.

No use. Keys in ignition, engine firing up, cylinders pushing and pulling into momentum. He drives to Precinct 41.

* * *

They place Harry’s body onto a cold, metal slab. The attendants leave at a look from Gottlieb, and don’t protest. They don’t want to be present when Jean Vicquemare finally fucking loses it.

Cold water slows the process of decomposition, especially in salt water, but once the corpse exits the wet environment, the process accelerates exponentially. A buildup of gases. Mottled skin. Jean looks at Harry’s fingers. The skin peels back, sickly yellow and wrinkled, from the cuticles. Washerwoman’s hands, nail beds dark and purple, veins stark against pale skin. He must’ve been in the water for half a day, at least. Now, things will only start to look worse. Sloughing flesh, effluvia. Decayed and gone.

Jean pulls over a metal stool and sits beside the corpse. Pox scars mar his face under his eyes, behind his ears, a relic of long ago. A reminder of mortality. He looks at his ex-partners face and studies it. It’s relatively intact. Almost peaceful. Jean places a hand on Harry’s cheek. It’s blue and red and yellow and purple. And cold. He runs a thumb over tangled eyelashes and resists the manic urge to punch the corpse in the fucking face.

“You look like shit.” It doesn’t respond. That just makes him angrier.

He leans in, vehement. “Good work, shitkid. Finally fucking did it.” He growls. “Managed to outrun even Kitsuragi, and he was *so* hopeful.”

Jean won’t have to chain his fucking life to shit infested junkie anymore. What a fucking relief.

“I fucking hate you, you know that?” Scars ache under his uniform: sordid proof of their five year partnership. “Look at how much my antidepressants cost me every year. I’m a goddamn RCM officer; I can’t afford that shit. And this is how you fucking repay me.”

The corpse remains silent. Jean swallows. His heart feels like it's bursting in his chest. “I’ll go; will that make you happy? I’ll go with you and Kitsuragi to the fucking anodic music festival, whatever the hell that is.” He tries to smile. He expects Harry to smile with him. They both fail.

“Wake up,” he says. “You bastard.”

And he begins to cry.

* * *

Kitsuragi parks, and as always, he parks perfectly. Something about that angers him, but he closes the Kineema door with as much care as always, and strides towards the station at the same pace as always. 

Streetcars screech by as always. Birds chirp as always. Gravity pulls him down, the sky is up high. Nothing is changed, but it feels like it should.

Gottlieb is at the door. When he sees Kim, he wordlessly turns around and begins heading towards the station morgue. Kim follows. Down the hall, to the left. Past a chittering group of patrol officers. They disperse when they see the stern-faced doctor.

Gottlieb speaks. “Officer Vicquemare is in there.”

Of course he is. “That is fine.” 

Gottlieb nods. There’s nothing else to say.

The two of them reach the double doors of the morgue. 

Kim stops. “When will you perform the autopsy?”

Gottlieb stares resolutely at the doors. He catches a glimpse of dark hair through the window. “There’s no relatives visiting, so after you see him.”

“And funeral arrangements?”

“Taken care of by the RCM.”

“Good. That’s good.” And with that, he enters.

Jean sits, hunched over the detective’s body. He doesn’t turn when Kim enters. “You’re here.”

Kim looks around the room and spots a stool. It’s slightly shorter than Jean’s, but it’ll do. He drags it over to the only metal slab open at the moment, and takes a seat across from the officer. “I’m here.”

Kim examines Jean’s face first, unwilling to look down. He looks terrible. Red rings his eyes. More haggard than ever. He notices the scrutiny and chuckles, then gestures at the dead body between the both of them, as if it were a banquet on a dinner table. “Pleasant weather we’re having. Nice of you to join me on this beautiful lunch date.” A maggot squirms on Harry’s wrist.

Kim takes a deep breath, hands curling into fists on his knees, and straightens his back. He looks down with a jerk of his chin. Observes the water damage. The rotting flesh. “How kind of you to invite me,” he grits out.

Jean barks out a harsh laugh. “You invited yourself, sir.”

Kim takes off his gloves, folds them, and puts them in his jacket pocket. “Do you know how he died?”

“The shitkid knows how to swim, and there’s no abrasions on his body that suggest that he got knocked out, then fell in. Then there’s the bullshit about pale radiation. Of course, they haven’t run a toxicology report yet, so he may have just—”

“He didn’t OD, sergeant.” He wouldn’t.

“And how do you know that, Lieutenant?” Jean asks. Bitterness edges his voice. “Maybe he finally got tired of being better, as he always does, but this time he fell from too far up.”

Kim adjusts his glasses. “This is pointless. We do not have the toxicology report.”

“Yes, look at us. Arguing over a dead man.” Both of the men look down simultaneously, at the detective’s tranquil face. The situation suddenly seems absurdly funny. “He sure ran us for a loop.”

“...Indeed.”

Vicquemare shakes his head and stands. “How long are you going to stay? I’ve passed my five minute limit.” He winces. “That rhymed,” he murmurs.

“I…” Kim tears his eyes away from the corpse. He pushes down the urge to vomit. “I’ll follow you out.”

Jean pauses. “Are you sure, lieutenant?”

Kim smiles grimly. Already has the detective’s corpse been burned into his mind. Slack expression. Peeling skin. He doesn’t need to stay longer. “I’m sure.” He gets up.

He might regret it tomorrow, but right now, it’s for the better.

“Alright.” Jean places the stools back to their original places. “Alright. Let’s go.”

They exit through the side route, avoiding other officers. “Do you have permission to leave, sergeant?”

Jean shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’m sure Pryce won’t mind. He’d probably give us a month of leave, if we asked nicely. Harry was just that kind of man.”

“He was.” Kim takes the lead and heads towards his Kineema. Jean opens the door for him.

But Kim doesn’t enter. He looks at his ex-partner’s ex-partner, a man he had never gotten to know. Professionalism was his justification. A need to look the other way, whenever interpersonal affairs were involved.

But he’d been neglectful. This was beyond “interpersonal affairs.” He looks at Jean’s eyes, then feels the tremor in his hands. Harry meant something to both of them—hadn’t he?—and Kim had simply been afraid that the detective had meant something different to Jean. That Harry wasn’t always someone willing to be better. That Harry was not always a bastion of hope. That the only reason that Kim Kitsuragi, ace of Precinct 57, had met that impossibility of a man in the Whirling in Rags two years ago is because Jean made sure he remained alive for half a decade, at all costs, including himself. 

Jean tilts his head, confused. He begins to nervously fiddle with the lighter in his pocket.

Jean didn’t complain when he was demoted to Sergeant, or when Kitsuragi was assigned as Du Bois’s partner. Didn’t say a single word. He stuck around, despite everything. Despite the fact that the entire world seemed to have forgotten what he’d sacrificed. Ignored what those five years had done to him, in spirit and in body and in bone.

Kim had ignored it too, just as Harry did before Martinaise. By all technicalities, it wasn’t his problem. But doesn’t he deserve *something*? Anything. To him, Harry died two years ago, and his ghost has haunted him ever since: a cruel mirage of a man that could’ve been, if he had been kinder. Every offer to spend time together a reminder of what was lost, every well-meaning gesture bitter in its context.

Now, Harry has died, finally. For both of them. The one man in either of their lives that they had let close to their hearts, even if for one of them it was for worse. They’re alone.

But they don’t have to be.

“Get in,” Kim says, gesturing towards the Kineema.

Jean stares for two beats, then blinks. He obeys.

Kim settles into the driver's seat. The tickets in his jacket pocket glow with promise. They will go to the anodic concert in two months, no matter what. They'll move on. “Know a good bar?”

Jean grins—pathetic and wobbly—but it’s there and it’s genuine. “Oh, I know *several.*”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments and kudos are appreciated :)


End file.
